Facts. Fast.
Saturday mornings in our house are usually pancakes or waffle time. It’s the one morning when we have extended time to make breakfast.
I’m a free soul in the kitchen, which means I don’t follow a consistent recipe, sometimes making it up on my own, but more often I’m googling for a pancake recipe in the moment.
Which is where the frustration lies.
Once you start clicking on links promising pancake recipes, you will end up on one of two types. The narrative or the facts.
Most recipe sites offer me 95% more details about pancakes than I want. I’m scrolling through the page past sections about when to flip pancakes, how to reheat pancakes, can you freeze pancakes. So I jump to another page promising the “Easiest Pancake Recipe Ever” where I scroll past paragraphs about the secret to best-ever pancakes, how do you make pancakes fluffy, or what kind of pan to use.
I tried one more link, and scrolled through four long paragraphs about the author’s grandma’s “ultimate comfort breakfast” pancakes.
When I’m in the midst of three energetic and hungry boys on a Saturday morning I’m not interested in stories about someone’s grandma, details on how to freeze pancakes, or what tasting tests this recipe went through before publication.
I have my pan. I have my ingredients. I have my stovetop. And I have hungry kids.
Tell me:
How many eggs.
How much milk, sugar, flour, salt, and baking powder.
I need facts. I want them fast.
The details for making pancakes should fit on a third of a 3x5 index card.
So why am I scrolling through pages of narratives, and secondary pancake-related topics before getting these details?
Apparently, most online recipe writers and editors are enamored with telling nostalgic stories, asserting their expertise in the pancake domain, or getting paid by the word count.
It’s called burying the lede.
This is the same for many dashboards and reports I’ve seen out there. Specifically by the people most skilled in Business Intelligence and Data visualization.
They love telling stories with the data. Crafting a narrative around product cycles, trends in populations and demographics, and profit margin for legacy products.
They enjoy flexing their expertise in the data by making it dance, highlight, conditionally format, dynamically filter, and drill through.
But you are burying the lede.
Know your audience. Some will want long narratives and have time and attention to play around with tertiary features and fancy toggle filters.
But most want facts. And fast.
They have the client on the phone.
They have a board meeting this afternoon.
They have hungry boys climbing on them.
Know your business audience.
Clear is better than cute.
Simple is better than savvy.
Sawyer
from The Data Shop
